Following the technological advancements, many conventional manners of transactions and payments are gradually replaced by integrated circuit (IC) cards. Among others, financial cards, public phone payment cards and prepayment cards are now very common IC cards. Generally, according to the data access manners, IC cards can be divided into contact IC cards, contactless IC cards and hybrid IC cards.
In the case of a contact IC card, the data stored therein is accessed via metal contact pads provided on the card. Examples of the contact IC cards include different chip financial cards. In the case of a contactless IC card, the data stored therein is accessed via RF induction. Examples of the contactless IC cards include the prepayment cards or electronic wallets applicable to public transport means. After various types of IC cards have been available in the market, there is developed a hybrid or combination IC card having two different data access interfaces. The hybrid IC card integrates different functions of the credit card, financial card, electronic wallet and prepayment card into one single IC card, enabling a user to receive diversified services with only one card.
Presently, the commonly used IC card internally includes one microprocessor and one memory. The memory has an application stored therein and the application is executable by the microprocessor. When the IC card has bugs or requires application improvement, a firmware update of the application is needed. Usually, to update the firmware of the application, a new version firmware image file is transmitted to the memory via a physical transmission medium, such as a flash disk, an optical disc or a memory card, or via an Internet transmission protocol, such as the Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP) or the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), so that the memory updates the application according to the new version firmware image file and changes the application to an updated application.
However, in the event the memory updates the application using the new version firmware image file but the update is has failed, the updated application will lack a part of the code and will not be able to be executed by the microprocessor. In this case, the IC card will fail. A way for the failed IC card to operate successfully is to let the memory use the new version firmware image file to update the application again. However, in a worse condition, the settings of the IC card must be restored to reset the application to its initial state and then try the update operation again. This condition will doubtlessly cause inconvenience in using the IC card.